Random Acts of Kindness for the week so far

Monday

Let elderly get on the bus before me when it was raining x 3

Woke up early to make sure Chelsey was on time

Helped Chelsey find supplies she needed for class

called friend to wish her a happy birthday

Tuesday


Woke up early to make sure Chelsey was on time

Did Chelsey's taxes for her

Brought home supper for Chelsey

Offered up my seat on the train to elderly gentleman

Wednesday

Woke up early to make sure Chelsey was on time (not sure if this is random by the third time)

Made Chelsey supper when she was really tired

Helped Coworker catch the right train home.

And as an act of kindness to myself I did a class of hot yoga and got all stretched out.

Held door for someone

As important as the acts of kindness are there where several opportunities that I missed where at the time I was to in my own head and not being aware.

missed acts:
offering my seat up on the bus to those older then me x2
making breakfast for Chelsey before her early morning classes
And probably a dozen more that I was not even aware of.

Sihing Craig Janzen

engagement

It feels like forever since I last blogged and though it has only been a month, that is an unacceptable amount of time. Engagement is something that I have been really struggling with this year and not blogging has further distanced me with the kwoon and my team. It was easier to stay engaged when I was still in Alberta because I was seeing the team on an almost daily basis. In class I would get encouragement or be pushed when needed and I was able to communicate in person with everyone else. Though I was still reading blogs and mostly kind of keeping up with writing my own it seemed that it wasn't quite as necessary. An incredibly wrong way of thinking about this for two reasons. 

1) the blog is not only to share your experiences but to also act as a journal that you can look back on. It's hard to notice progress sometimes unless you have a reference point and it is even harder to remember the past. To prove this try and remember your day three days ago what did you do and how did you feel chances are your already forgetting a lot of details. 

2) secondly this helped to establish a lazy habit towards journalling that like I said have been struggling with for this year.

So where am I at so far in the year? I'm at a point where I can give up having technically failed a couple of my requirements. Go on living a disconnected life completely unengaged and progressively waste several years of training and the benefits that went along. But I refuse to quit because I am stubborn and I refuse to accept mediocrity because I have higher aspirations for myself. 

A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.Mark Twain 

It's what you make of it.

If you want something bad enough you will find a way to get it. I read that the other day as the title of an email, thought nothing about it and continued on my day. It's resurfaced in my thoughts after finding out that my diploma won't transfer to UBC. I have to plan a new path for getting to school which is not as bad of a thing as originally thought when I first got the email. Sometimes I think it would be nice though if things went easy but then I think would it be as meaningful in the end? This is no different then my position with my training. I find myself without a Kwoon but I do have plenty of opportunities to train and have to make sure that I take them.

On a tangent of school. Finally finished my last assignment all that is left is exams and the semester is completed. I already feel like I'm getting a life back and feel like I slept more in the last couple days then I have in the past three weeks. Now to fix my numbers that took a fair hit. I also am going to be looking for some volunteer opportunities over the summer and have begun working with a start up NPO that will be doing work with orphans in China. I guess I'm not good at taking a break.

Sihing Craig Janzen

impact

One of the main components of my geography classes is determining the impact of humans on the environment. It's not surprising that the impact is almost always negative. Both classes tend to be depressing as we study example after example of the destructive nature of the human race, which is often times due to limited forethought or little consideration of the natural world. We live out of harmony with the planet constantly using it as our playground or wasteland and are putting little effort into trying to rectify the damage. No this isn't news to me but sometimes I need to remind myself not to be a passive individual in all of this and that there are things that I can do.

stress

I have been having a hard time getting any words down this week, which is why I am late with this entry. There has been a lot on my mind lately and I have been feeling kind of down and out. Mostly just low energy partly due to the lack of sleep that I have been getting and partly due to me stressing out a bit about school, getting into the program I want, and just general life things. I never used to really stress out about anything. I also maintained a philosophy that everything would just work out for me. It's not that I expected the universe to just magically produce results I wanted out of thin air. I knew that I had to work for things but I believed that everything would just work out in my favour and generally it did. in fact it used to drive Chelsey crazy not just my lack of stress but how much things went my way and then me telling her that I was right and we had nothing to worry about. Somewhere along the way I grew up, moved out and kind have lost that train of thought. Now I go to work and worry that it won't be enough to survive or that even though I did my best on my portfolio that it wont be good enough. I have been thinking about this for the last week, how this change in mindset has been affecting life for me and have realized that it has been dampening large parts of it. I have also been meditating daily on the fact that things will work out and on maintaing a positive outlook. I wouldn't say that I am a ball of stress by any means but in comparison there is a noticeable shift in mood and attitude and it is something that I will be working on but I think in the end it will all work out.

first month check in

Nearing the end of the first month and I already feel a bit behind the eight ball on some of my challenges. Push ups and sit ups are where they should be but I am not getting enough forms in. I will have to devote more of my time when I am home on break to doing my forms. Speaking about forms I have been playing around a lot with a pair of sai's that I picked up and am slowly piecing together a form for them. Keeping them out where I can see them means that I play with them more. Aside from the forms my kung fu based goals are all on track it is more so my school and life related goals that are kind of suffering. This past week I have spent a fair a mount of time re-organizing my living space so now I have significantly more room to train inside. I also got outside and went hiking a couple times this week. One day was really nice and sunny the other day was pouring rain. My kilometers are probably one of the most positively impacted goals since moving to Vancouver. Without having to depend on a car I walk more, averaging roughly 10km a day. So lots of room for improvement but as long as I can keep tracking everyday and maintain awareness of what needs to be done I'll be able to keep on top of things.

untitled

So I just wanted to start off by saying congratulations to this years black belt candidates. I am sad that I missed seeing the ceremony I heard it was awesome. Second I wanted to say hello to the Snake team.

Things here have just settled down. I had my portfolio submission school on friday at 4:00pm which I got in just in time. It only took a couple all nighters and tons of last minute changes but all in all I am really proud of the finished package the printing looked great and I hand made the book out of birch so it looks really nice but was a lot of work and a bit of a learning experience.

Unfortunately kung fu was a bit of a bare minimum over the last week which is not a great way to start the year and I will be playing some catch-up same with some of my school projects that are coming up due after this week. I did record myself doing my form as a piece for my portfolio. I now understand why it is recommended. Recording yourself allows you to objectively critique your form. Personally I was able to pick up several things that I need to work on in my forms even though I shot it as a silhouette. I can also tell you that soft sand is not the best place to do your forms even if it looks great in video. 

  

In transit

I came to a realization today. I have been wasting time. Sometimes only 15 minutes sometimes up to an hour maybe even more. Previous to this realization my time spent I transit has been spent playing games on my phone, perusing Facebook or some other form of wasting time. Today on my trip home I decided it would be a good day to write my blog entry and going over lau gaur in my mind.

Another thought on transit is that everyone seems so unhappy on the bus. People in Vancouver tend to come off as really unfriendly. It is rare to have a spontaneous conversation with a stranger.

An exception today was as I got off the train and was walking to the bus there was a group of girls offering free hugs to people as they got off the train. Most people walked by without acknowledging their existence and I considered doing the same. Instead I stopped and asked what the catch was. The girls response was only to have a good day for the rest of my day. So I said ok and took my free hug and continued on with my day. I noticed a couple other people after I did this also got a hug and as for my good day I walked to the bus stop just as the bus was pulling up.

it's only food

As some of you are aware two summers ago I had challenged myself to complete a 100-mile diet for 100 days. I learned a lot about food over those 100 days and I cannot lie I often found myself hungry in the early weeks until I had figured out viable sources of local food. For those of you who are unaware, a 100 mile diet consists of eating only food that is grown withen 100 miles of where you live with the exception of when you are eating at someone else's house. The premise sounds simple until you arrive at the grocery store the first time. Quickly you realize that the food being sold has traveled great distances to make it your plate. Looking back I think I was able to get maybe a handful of vegetables and one specific brand of grains that I was able to trace to withen 100 miles, also I learned that nothing packaged is 100 mile diet friendly.

From that point on I had to rely on the farmers market, but only after talking to every vendor and inquiring about every aspect of their food, and on friends and neighbours who had grown fruits and vegetables or hunted.  Suddenly buying food was a community event for Chelsey and I. by talking to each farmer at the market we not only learned what they had where they grew it and their proximity to us but we began to learn about the people who provided the food and the lives that the animals lived before becoming food.

It would be lying if I said the three months were easy, there was definitely foods that we missed, foods we got really sick of, and the fact that our 100 mile diet went through Chelsey's birthday. Starting in April with little preparation meant that all we ate were root vegetables and flat bread for the first week and a bit, but when we did get established often times we found that the grocery store foods just didn't compare to the flavours of the market food.

I bring this up because food is often taken for granted, unless it is no longer readily available. Society also has a huge disconnect with our food system. As athletes we constantly monitor what it is that we put into our bodies but how many of us look at where it comes from and the environmental impact of our diets. After talking with Chelsey about food for some lengths we decided that we will for the month of June (not her birthday this year) be partaking in a 100 mile diet again in Vancouver and I am offering an open invitation for anyone to join me.

Sihing Craig Janzen

Year of the Dragon in a nutshell

As this years UBBT is beginning to wrap up I find myself looking back at this year. It was tough one where I was thrown a couple curve balls like moving out of the province, finding out about the torn cartilage in my knee, having my kung fu bag and weapons stolen, and probably some other things. The biggest one was moving and being away from the kwoon. Without the structure of classes my my self discipline towards my training went pretty quickly. On top of that I was not keeping up with my blogging and am still not great at it. This further isolated me from the kwoon and my fellow teammates.  These are things that I really have to work and have to make my self more accountable for.

Another thing I realized this year is that keeping track of numbers in a purely digital form doesn't work at least for me. I thought having set up a spreadsheet that was accesible from my computer, my phone, my ipad, or basically any device with internet would make it so that I was alway up to date and seeing the numbers would have me always aware of them and keeping them up to date. I never made it effortless effort which is really what would have kept the numbers up to date. Another problem is that in a purely digital form I am able to detach myself and skip updating my numbers. In my case it would have been better to keep a hard copy and transfer the numbers weekly to see my running totals.

Finally one of my biggest hurdle which was self made, the snooze button. Instead of getting up and starting my day off with pushups it is usually a mad scramble out the door to get to work, school, or insert destination on time. Not only does this mean that I am not doing my kung fu but that I am also not properly nourishing myself. It is my goal for the next year to eliminate the snooze button from my habit and wake up and get out of bed.

It wasn't all negative for this year. I did keep my commitment to go on two dates with Chelsey a month, something that can be tough given the amount I work and my schedule mixed with her schedule and amount of homework. Another Success was that I am now actively learning a new language. One of my classes is mandarin. I also rebuilt a relationship with my cousin who I haven't talked to in more then two years.

Sihing Craig Janzen